My Christmas Ornament Collection

I finally have a kind of a collection of Christmas ornaments ready to sell on the Christmas poetry event i mentioned in previous posts. Above is a foam plastic ball covered with glittery yarn. Below are my handmade ornament sets. First two are made of carton and the other three are polymer clay.

In addition to Christmas ornaments i will be selling some handmade gifts.

My cell phone cozies:

Handmade fabric pins:

And some of my crochet doilies:

This is the first time i'll be selling my creations, so i am very excited. I am not planning to sell them all, but i hope somebody finds something they like among my lovelies.

Poetry Books

I took part in a fun project this year together with two poets. We made books with their poems to sell/give away on a Christmas poetry event i mentioned in previous posts. The poets took care of all content and i've put together the books and made the covers.

The first book is by Platon Lliv. He wrote 10 of his poems by hand and added some cut outs from old books/magazines as illustrations. I've made 10 books with a minimalistic cover and scans of his writings inside.

The second book has poems by Tatiana Pertseva. She had combined her poems with loads of collages made of magazine and advertisement cut outs, own photographs, old tickets and lots of other found treasures. I've made 5 books with scans of her works. Each book has a slightly different cover made with two types of carton. The names and titles on the covers of both books were hand stamped using my alphabet stamps, letter by letter.

I really enjoyed working on this project. We already agreed on a larger project of this kind with one of the poets. Will start after the x-mas holiday. Can't wait!

Christmas home

Last weekend i've started decorating our apartment with Christmas stuff.

I bought this white Christmas tree a couple of years ago. I thought we might not have snow for Christmas so i wanted lots of white inside our apartment. There was plenty of snow last two winters, but this time it seems that we might not have any.

I got these lights and the little candle house last week. I just got this idea that i want to have lights inside something, and once i saw this glass house i realized that it's perfect for my white theme.

This year we have a real advent calendar with little gifts. We had only chocolate ones before.

This year i wanted to add some red to my Christmas decorations, so i got this "Christmas star" flower.

The white fake "Christmas star" flowers and glittery decorations are from last years.

We always have some extra ornaments, because our tree is so small. This time i wanted to display them somehow, so i put them in a big jar with some tinsel on the bottom.

More Christmas Decorations

I bought some modeling clay and made more X-mas decorations. I used cookie-cutters for the shapes, acrylic paints and lots of glitter for decorating. Instagram pics again, sorry for that. I get so tired after making these that i don't feel like getting the camera out and going trough the whole process of taking and processing pictures. But i will definitely have a list of everything i have for sale for the Christmas poetry event with proper pictures once everything is ready.

Lots of little crafts and Christmas decorations

I've been making lots of small stuff recently, because I got a chance to actually show and sell some of my works. There's an annual Christmas poetry event we take part in (last year we did an installation and i always get to decorate the place). So this year i will also sell some of my handmade items there. I'm trying to prepare as much things as i can, so i've been busy with that a lot nowadays. I didn't bother taking proper pictures, because not everything is ready yet, but here are Instagram photos of some things i've made recently.

Lots of crochet doily coasters

Little crochet pouches (they still need buttons)

Fabric covered pins

And finally some Christmas stuff! Gingerbread-looking carton decorations

Fabric covered carton Christmas tree decorations.

Some new and old knitting

I've finally finished knitting Mitya's beanie. It took me about two weeks, because i didn't use any pattern, so i had to take it apart and start all over again couple of times. It has two layers, which is also why it took quite long time.

I also remembered that i've never shown here the scarf i made last winter. It took me ages to make this scarf, so by the time it was ready the winter was over and i didn't really use it until now. It also has two layers, i made it with 5 double pointed needles. I'm happy how it turned out, exactly what i wanted.

We both look so sad on those pics for some reason. I guess Mitya is sad because he's loaded with school work and i'm sad because there's no snow :( (i have loads of school work too, but i'm more sad about the snow)

Photos from the Russia tour

I got the photos from our Russia tour developed and scanned. I had a break from shooting film, but i got back to it on this tour and i'm happy i did, cause the photos came out looking exactly like the warm memories i had of this tour. Above is the entrance to the place we played at in Petrozavodsk.

And this is what it looked like inside. It was a part of an old tractor factory, really nice place but really hard to warm up, so we were all freezing there.

Preparing for the show.

Big merch table.

Love Cult performing.

Olli Aarni.

Walking around the city the next day after the show.

You can whisper your wishes to this tree and it should make them come true :)

There were almost no people walking outside that day, the weather wasn't to pleasant, but we had a really nice walk.

Chrysanthemum tea with biscuits in Moscow.

Chinese take-away in Moscow.

We got a huge watermelon as a gift in Saransk after the show. The people were really nice there. We played in a university auditorium, but unfortunately i didn't take any photos there.

Drinking tea in Saransk.

Walking around Saransk. Love those houses!

In a train back to Moscow.

"Stirka 40" cafe/bar/laundrette in St Petersburg.

Crochet on the road

It's been almost two weeks since i'm back home from the tour but i'm only starting to get back to normal life. When you are on the road non-stop even for a short amount of time, it takes time to get used to normal life again where you don't need to move all the time and you don't meet new people every day. I got the pics from the tour developed yesterday, i'll share them soon once i get time to scan them.

We've spent quite a lot of time in trains so i had plenty of time to try out some crochet patterns from my new books:

Unfortunately, i don't have any photos of the doily i've made using the pattern from the "Pineapple doilies" book, because i gave the doily to my mom. It was the doily from the cover. The instructions in this book were really clear and the doily turned out really pretty.

From the "Lacy Crochet" book i especially enjoyed making round coasters. First i've made them exactly following the instructions.

When i've used all the colors that i had with me and got a bit bored of the same pattern, i've tried a different edging.

I've also tried a large square doily from the same book. I did my own edging and more rows than the pattern suggested.

This large round doily was actually the first one i've made from the book before we left on tour.

I am really happy that i got this book (the full title is "Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts! Lacy Crochet"). I really like the way it's designed, all the examples on the photographs are made with really pretty pastel yarn, really similar colors with the ones i have and i really like them. There are both templates and text instructions with photos for each project. There are also instructions for basic stitches, so the book could be good for beginners as well. It was my first time working with crochet templates, and i really liked it, because i often get lost in text patterns when there are lots of rows involved. There are instructions with photos for each sign in the templates, so i've learnt to use them quite fast.

This post was not sponsored by anyone. I did not get any money to review the items featured in this post.